Indestructible Man (1956)

good back-story, and good acting

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

*Spoiler/plot- Indestructible Man, 1956. "Butcher" Benton goes to his death in the state prison. He's cursing the three men who double-crossed him following an armored-car hold-up; his two gang pals with Paul Lowe, his attorney and leader of the gang. He vows to return and kill them. Butcher is executed without revealing the location of the stolen money. Detective Chasen is determined to keep working on the case until the stolen loot is recovered. Benton's body is taken to Professor Bradshaw and his assistant (Joe 'Mcales Navy' Flynn) for post-death experimentation. They manage to restore him to life, making him practically indestructible in huge amounts of energy. Butcher takes off after the three men, getting rid of everybody who stands in his way. He is impervious to police bullets. He kills gang pals Ellis and Marcelli. Now lawyer Lowe seeks police protection. Benton takes to the Los Angeles sewers to recover the hidden loot and the police are powerless to stop him. Drama film finish goes underground then.*Special Stars- Lon Chaney Jr., Max Showwalter, Marion Carr, Robery Shayne, Roy Engel, Joe Flynn. *Theme- Man sometimes should not tamper with nature and death.*Trivia/location/goofs- All of Chaney's dialog was in the first scene due to his reportedly extremely heavy alcohol use during lunch break. Locations: The Bradbury Building is an architectural landmark in Los Angeles, California. The building was built in 1893 and is located at 304 South Broadway (3rd and Broadway) in downtown Los Angeles. Angeles Flight was in Los Angeles downtown only a block away. Delores Hamburger Drive-in was another landmark of the area.*Emotion- A enjoyable film mainly due to Lon Chaney Jr film presence at his career's end. Wonderfully 'noir' and sci-fi at the same time. There are many levels of drama and parallels to recent modern film's to satisfy the knowledgeable film fan.*Based On- Frankenstein legends.

A cheap retelling of the Frankenstein legend, only here it's Chaney seeking revenge by terrorizing parts of LA.Okay, I confess to plunking down my teenage quarter to see this on first release—must have been a slow afternoon. Actually, the movie's not as bad as might be expected. What it has going for it is a lot of imaginative location photography. For a cheap production, the producers don't settle for cardboard sets. Instead they send the crew out onto the streets of LA to capture parts of the city rarely seen on screen. And what I remember most are the seedy glimpses of skid row and the burlesque house. At least these lend color to the nutty proceedings.But would somebody please send Chaney to a sobering-up clinic. He looks like he's been on a ten-day bender, and every time he squints into the camera, I swear I'll never take another drink. There's enough Jim Beam oozing out of those rheumy eyes to stock a flop house bar. Too bad he ended a hopeless alcoholic, and it shows here. There's also some bad acting (Joe Flynn) and silly dialog (the lab scene), but less than you might expect from a no-name supporting cast. Anyway, seeing the movie again, I'd say I only wasted a dime of that long- ago quarter.

A scientist, working on a cure for cancer, uses a machine which sends electric bolts into the confiscated corpse of executed armored car robber Butcher Benton (Lon Chaney, Jr). Benton knows the whereabouts of $600,000 stolen from the car, hidden away from three people who helped orchestrate the job, a sleazy lawyer named Paul Lowe (Ross Elliot, laying on the slime, quite a heel), and two partners, crippled "torch man" Joe Marcelli (Ken Terrell) and "Squeamy" Ellis (Marvin Ellis). These three, out of revenge for Benton's hiding the loot, turned state's evidence against him, which led to the Butcher's arrest. Meanwhile, Detective Richard Chasen (Max Showalter), while reassigned to a different case, continues to work on the armored car heist off-duty hours. A beautiful blond burlesque dancer, Eva Martin (Marian Carr), knew Benton, and doesn't have a clue that an envelope from the Butcher (stolen by Lowe) contained a map to where the loot is kept in the sewers below Los Angeles. Butcher, thanks to the mad science which sent thousands of volts into his body, multiplying his cells and shocking his heart back to life, has been given superhuman strength and an ability to withstand bullets fired from the guns of police who dare to attempt to arrest him. A vow of revenge against the trio who sent him to prison, Benton will go after Lowe, Marcelli, and Ellis. Chasen, the Los Angeles Police department, and Eva will try to stop him from causing carnage and death as the body count rises when those who enter his trajectory often wind up quashed. INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN is a C-grade vehicle with Lon Chaney's name is big letters, milking his horror icon status for all its worth. Max Showalter's narration doesn't just draw us a map, but an architectural layout of the plot. The director features so many close-ups of Chaney's face—particularly his eyes—it's borderline embarrassing. But, jowls, haggard look, wrinkled face, the sign of alcoholism and living up to his father's fame, I felt, actually adds a little extra to his characters. He is still burly and towering, with quite a presence, imposing his stature over those who are unfortunately in the way. The conclusion features not only a chase through a sewer system, but quite a fireworks show when Benton attempts to *recharge his batteries* using the electricity of a power plant. Butcher also gets his hands on two of those who wronged him, lifting them up in the air and hurling them to their doom. But, the film, when Chaney is absent, is standard crime drama fare. Carr, quite a bombshell, who becomes a romantic love interest for the film's hero, Dick Chasen, isn't exactly the world's greatest actress, but is certainly eye candy. Chaney's so powerful he can incapacitate two grown man with choke holds, knock a door of its hinges with a shoulder block, lift a car up off the ground, take a missile launcher blast to the chest, and a blow torch to the face! Chaney's only dialogue comes at the beginning when he warns Lowe that he will kill him. He mostly lumbers about, a look of madness in his eyes, heart full of hate, murderous intent on the brain. While the movie didn't do a lot for me personally, Chaney's presence in the film supplied enough entertainment to watch it all the way through to the end.

Someone somewhere must've had tongue tucked into cheek: INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN, a rehash of Chaney's MAN MADE MONSTER, is chock full of names like "Dick Chasen," "Captain Lauder," and a lawyer named "Lowe." (Here's an oxymoron for ya: "honest lawyer.") Funniest of all, though, has to be Wally Cox as a lab assistant: it was Cox who provided the unforgettable voice of one of my all-time favorite cartoon superheroes, UNDERDOG. The print of INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN that I saw seemed to have been cut: almost every single time there's a death, it takes place off screen (though the aftermath is clearly shown). It's not badly done, it's just not by any means exceptional; even Chaney's normally sympathetic portrayal is slightly off (as one might expect, seeing as how he's playing an executed murderer). If the storyline sounds familiar to comic book fans, it should: Marvel's Luke CAGE, HERO FOR HIRE, was probably inspired by it (the same way DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, FRANKENSTEIN, and THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS inspired THE HULK).